Latest Articles
With more hired guns in Iraq than in any other U.S. conflict since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, armed contractors admit their role is cloudy and controversial. They're driven by money and a lust for life on the edge, but also by a self-styled altruism. They do shoot to kill, but they aren't legally considered combatants.
Read MorePrivate contractors in Iraq say pay can top $100,000 for a year's work. But plenty of danger is often part of the bargain. Frank Atkins, who returned home in October, said danger was part of his job as a police adviser. Sometimes, the former Marine enjoyed the thrill of fighting off insurgent attacks alongside U.S. military personnel on his convoys.
Read MoreOn March 7, 2004, the Zimbabwe police detained a chartered plane and arrested 70 of the passengers. Most of those detained said they had been hired by a security consultancy company to guard a diamond mine in Congo. A few days later, the government of Equatorial Guinea announced that its police had arrested 20 people who were the vanguard for the force that was arrested in Harare. According to the announcement, the two groups were connected and had planned to topple the regime of President Teodoro Obiang.
Read MoreThe president and his aides do not believe that Severo Moto, the opposition leader, was behind the coup plot. They think he was a pawn in the hands of forces and interests stronger than him - probably businessmen and perhaps Western governments. One of the names mentioned in this connection is that of the British-Lebanese financier and oil broker Eli Calil.
Read MoreIn a city that has been rocked by the Enron collapse and subsequent prosecutions, the indictment of Houston oil executive David Chalmers Jr. and a Houston-based Bulgarian oil trader serves notice that the probe of irregularities in the U.N.-supervised oil-for-food program will likely ensnare more energy industry figures before it is finished.
Read MoreThe U.S. Government has defended its decision to award a £293 million Iraq Security contract to British mercenary Tim Spicer, in reponse to concerns raised by the family of Belfast man Peter McBride, who was shot dead by Scots Guards soldiers under Spicer's command in 1992.
Read MoreFederal authorities in New York today charged David B. Chalmers, a Houston oil trader, and his company, Bayoil, with making millions of dollars in illegal kickback payments to Iraq while trading oil under the program. Separate charges were brought against Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman who figured in a Washington influence-peddling scandal some 30 years ago, accusing him of acting as an unregistered agent for Iraq in behind-the-scenes negotiations in the United States to set up and administer the program.
Read MoreThe United States is one of the few countries in the world that still permits
agricultural uses of the pesticide lindane. More than 50 countries--including
all of Europe, Canada, and most recently Mexico--have phased out lindane use in
agriculture. Ninety-nine percent of remaining lindane use in the U.S. is for
seed treatment of a handful of grain crops.
Read More
The Defense Department is unable to track how it spent tens of millions of dollars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the U.S. war on terrorism, Congress's top investigator said. While there was no doubt that appropriated funds were spent, "trying to figure out what they were spent on is like pulling teeth," he said, referring to an accounting effort that is under way for Congress.
Read MorePentagon auditors have questioned $212.3 million of $1.69 billion that a Halliburton subsidiary charged the government over the past few years, mostly for importing fuel to Iraq under a no-bid contract. Halliburton spokeswoman Beverly Scippa said in an e-mail that the questioning by auditors "is all part of the normal contracting process."
Read More